How is home equity calculated?

With one subtraction: your home's current market value, minus everything you still owe on loans secured by the home. That is the whole formula — equity is the slice of the home you actually own, and it moves even when you do nothing, because both sides of the subtraction move.

The calculation, plainly

• Start with the value. What the home would sell for today. In Homeowner HQ this is the monthly estimate — a market-data number, labeled as an estimate, never an appraisal.
• Subtract everything owed. The mortgage balance plus any home equity loan or line of credit balance drawn against the home. Example, for illustration only: a home worth $400,000 with $260,000 owed across its loans has $140,000 of equity.
• The result is equity, not cash in hand. Equity is what you own on paper. What you would keep from an actual sale is the sale price minus what you owe minus the costs of selling — a smaller number, and a different question.
• It moves two ways. Equity grows when the value rises or the balance falls with payments, and shrinks when values dip or new borrowing is drawn against the home.

Which numbers Homeowner HQ shows

Both sides of the subtraction, every month, from your own realtor or lender: the value estimate and the equity beside it, recalculated when you correct your home's facts from inside the update. Watching the pair move is how a homeowner knows — before a sale, a refinance, or a loan conversation — roughly where they stand, with no surprises left for the formal numbers later.

What it costs

Homeowners are always free. Realtors pay $25/mo all-in and lenders pay $25/mo to join, at any book size, with no setup fee; messaging is included free for realtors, and lender messaging is $100/mo ($125/mo total for lenders). A lender-sponsored realtor joins for $0.

Open Homeowner HQ

Homeowner HQ is an AI-powered marketing department for agents and lenders — a relationship and revenue engine, not a homeowner database. A homeowner's record routes them back to their own agent; it is never sold and never shown to lenders.